The Prime Minister is clear that tackling poverty and disadvantage, and delivering real social reform, is a priority for this Government.

The Department for Work and Pensions is leading work across Government to bring forward a social justice green paper in the New Year. This will identify and address the root causes of poverty, building upon the two statutory indicators set out in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016.

Negotiating the details of the UK’s exit will take some time. The status of pensioners will need careful consideration and state pensions will be considered as part of the negotiations.

Following a Call for Evidence last year we are exploring alternative methods to help employers in multi-employer schemes manage section 75 employer debts.

Following a Call for Evidence last year we are exploring alternative methods to help employers in multi-employer schemes manage section 75 employer debts.

The Government is committed to ensuring that employers are aware of the wealth of skills and experience that older workers bring to the workplace. There is also a clear business need; by the 2030s over 50s will comprise over half of the UK adult working age population and employers increasingly need to employ and retain the skills and experience of older workers longer to remain competitive and avoid skills and labour shortages in the future.

The Government has recently appointed the Business in the Community (BiTC) Age at Work Leadership Team led by Andy Briggs, Chief Executive of Aviva UK and Chairman of Global Life, as Business Champion for Older Workers to promote the benefits older people bring to employers. The BiTC team will actively promote the benefits of older workers to employers across England – influencing them both strategically and in terms of practical advice.

Jobcentre Plus advisers have the flexibility to offer all claimants, including older people, a comprehensive menu of help which includes skills provision and job search support. All claimants who are long-term unemployed can access the tailored back to work support, on offer from the Work Programme.

Jobcentre Plus also introduced an Older Claimant Champion in each of its seven Jobcentre Plus Groups in April 2015. These Champions work with Work Coaches and employer-facing staff to raise the profile of older workers, highlight the benefits of employing older jobseekers and share best practice.

DWP is working with a range of organisations and employers to produce effective solutions and set up working groups of employers to look at improving the retention, retraining and recruitment of people age 50+. The Government will publish a new cross-government, employer-led national strategy which will set out the future direction of the Fuller Working Lives agenda early next year. The new strategy will be firmly grounded in “A New Vision for Older Workers: Retain, Retrain, Recruit”.

The Government is committed to ensuring that employers are aware of the wealth of skills and experience that older workers bring to the workplace. There is also a clear business need; by the 2030s over 50s will comprise over half of the UK adult working age population and employers increasingly need to employ and retain the skills and experience of older workers longer to remain competitive and avoid skills and labour shortages in the future.

The Government has recently appointed the Business in the Community (BiTC) Age at Work Leadership Team led by Andy Briggs, Chief Executive of Aviva UK and Chairman of Global Life, as Business Champion for Older Workers to promote the benefits older people bring to employers. The BiTC team will actively promote the benefits of older workers to employers across England – influencing them both strategically and in terms of practical advice.

Jobcentre Plus advisers have the flexibility to offer all claimants, including older people, a comprehensive menu of help which includes skills provision and job search support. All claimants who are long-term unemployed can access the tailored back to work support, on offer from the Work Programme.

Jobcentre Plus also introduced an Older Claimant Champion in each of its seven Jobcentre Plus Groups in April 2015. These Champions work with Work Coaches and employer-facing staff to raise the profile of older workers, highlight the benefits of employing older jobseekers and share best practice.

DWP is working with a range of organisations and employers to produce effective solutions and set up working groups of employers to look at improving the retention, retraining and recruitment of people age 50+. The Government will publish a new cross-government, employer-led national strategy which will set out the future direction of the Fuller Working Lives agenda early next year. The new strategy will be firmly grounded in “A New Vision for Older Workers: Retain, Retrain, Recruit”.

The Government is committed to ensuring that employers are aware of the wealth of skills and experience that older workers bring to the workplace. There is also a clear business need; by the 2030s over 50s will comprise over half of the UK adult working age population and employers increasingly need to employ and retain the skills and experience of older workers longer to remain competitive and avoid skills and labour shortages in the future.

The Government has recently appointed the Business in the Community (BiTC) Age at Work Leadership Team led by Andy Briggs, Chief Executive of Aviva UK and Chairman of Global Life, as Business Champion for Older Workers to promote the benefits older people bring to employers. The BiTC team will actively promote the benefits of older workers to employers across England – influencing them both strategically and in terms of practical advice.

Jobcentre Plus advisers have the flexibility to offer all claimants, including older people, a comprehensive menu of help which includes skills provision and job search support. All claimants who are long-term unemployed can access the tailored back to work support, on offer from the Work Programme.

Jobcentre Plus also introduced an Older Claimant Champion in each of its seven Jobcentre Plus Groups in April 2015. These Champions work with Work Coaches and employer-facing staff to raise the profile of older workers, highlight the benefits of employing older jobseekers and share best practice.

DWP is working with a range of organisations and employers to produce effective solutions and set up working groups of employers to look at improving the retention, retraining and recruitment of people age 50+. The Government will publish a new cross-government, employer-led national strategy which will set out the future direction of the Fuller Working Lives agenda early next year. The new strategy will be firmly grounded in “A New Vision for Older Workers: Retain, Retrain, Recruit”.

The table below shows health and safety incidents reported in the manufacture of refined petroleum products sector over the 5 years 2011/12-2015/16, for Great Britain. Each year is from 1 April to 31 March.

Source: RIDDOR (The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations);

p=provisional

Notes:

For fatal injuries, the data provided is based on the site of where the death occurred.

For non-fatal injuries and dangerous occurrences, the data is reported according to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), namely ‘SIC 19.2 – manufacture of refined petroleum products’. For non-fatal injuries reporting is made by the employer of the injured person.

Non-fatal injuries to workers are defined under RIDDOR, and cover specified injuries such as amputation or most bone fractures; prior to October 2013 these were known as Major Injuries. The non-fatal injury figures also include injuries resulting in more than seven days off work (the reporting threshold was over-3-days until April 2012).

Also from October 2013, some legislative changes were made to the “Types of Dangerous Occurrences” reportable under RIDDOR.

Dangerous Occurrences include incidents such as an explosion, fire or the release of flammable or other dangerous substances.

* Due to a reporting system change in September 2011, figures for Dangerous Occurrences in 2011/12 only cover seven months.

The Department does not track individual claims made by refugees. However, where people have problems getting a bank account, they are not prevented from making a claim for Universal Credit. Furthermore, DWP in conjunction with the Home Office, are currently piloting a new process to assist asylum seekers granted refugee status and needing support to make a claim to benefits.

Officials are currently assessing the data for Universal Credit and will only release information once the necessary quality assurance work has taken place. These statistics will be published in accordance with the relevant protocols in the Code of Practice for official statistics. The Department does not track individual claims made by refugees and therefore this information could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

The Department does not track individual claims made by refugees. However, where people have problems getting a bank account, they are not prevented from making a claim for Universal Credit. Furthermore, DWP in conjunction with the Home Office, are currently piloting a new process to assist asylum seekers granted refugee status and needing support to make a claim to benefits.

Officials are currently assessing the data for Universal Credit and will only release information once the necessary quality assurance work has taken place. These statistics will be published in accordance with the relevant protocols in the Code of Practice for official statistics. The Department does not track individual claims made by refugees and therefore this information could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

The Universal Credit Decision position is significantly improved and by January, it is anticipated the volume of outstanding sanction decisions would take 5 working days to clear.

We do not currently have data to indicate performance by time band for Universal Credit Full Service or for 3 days. The information below relates to Universal Credit Live Service only as a result.

Of the 25,154 decisions made in October 2016, 7789 (31.0%) were made in 0-5 working days. 14,705 (58.5%) were made in a timeframe exceeding 28 working days.

The Prime Minister is clear that tackling poverty and disadvantage, and delivering real social reform, is a priority for this Government. We intend to bring forward a social justice green paper in the New Year. As is customary with the development of any green paper, we are engaging in discussions with a range of organisations and individual experts.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy is to develop its staff in the skills and knowledge required to support a range of claimants sensitively and to respect their individual needs.

The Department for Work and Pensions published the Human Trafficking guidance on 15^th January 2016. The latest amendment to the guidance was made on 8^th November 2016. The instructions were published on the Customer Service A-Z homepage and communicated as part of monthly intranet updates. These instructions are available to any member of staff who is told, or suspects, that the customer they are dealing with is a victim of human trafficking.

The Government is committed to helping people achieve financial security in later life and is reforming the pension system as part of its efforts to encourage a culture of saving. Automatic enrolment was introduced to enable most people in work to save for later life. It has been a great success to date with over 6.8 million eligible workers enrolled by more than 290,000 employers since it began in 2012 and it is important we recognise the contribution employers have made to this achievement.

Automatic enrolment is currently being extended to small and micro employers. While the self-employed are not eligible for automatic enrolment, they will have legal duties to enrol any eligible workers in their employ. The Government understands that these employers may find complying with automatic enrolment challenging and we are doing all we can to make automatic enrolment as straightforward as possible for this group. The Department and The Pensions Regulator (TPR) are focussed on making compliance with automatic enrolment duties as clear as possible, as well as simplifying the language regarding automatic enrolment.

As part of this work, TPR has launched an interactive “Step by Step” guide on their website. This simplified guide to meeting AE duties is designed to meet the specific needs of employers who may not have pensions experience, including those with just one or two staff. The guide includes a duties checker so that employers can easily find out what they will need to do to comply and when. Using the duties checker also means employers will receive tailored communications relevant to their circumstances.

What an employer pays and the amount of time they spend on setting up automatic enrolment will depend on various factors, including how they use business advisers, how they run their payroll and which pension scheme they choose.

From research it has conducted, TPR estimates that small employers with between one and four staff members usually spend a total of about 10 hours overall carrying out all their automatic enrolment tasks, over a 12 month period before their staging date. This research has also shown that average costs associated with outsourced payroll are less than £200 while average pension scheme set up costs are under £500.

Automatic enrolment is a legal duty for employers, just like paying the National Living Wage, tax and National Insurance. There are no plans to reimburse employers for time or costs should their employees choose to opt-out. However, less than one in ten people are choosing to opt-out which is much lower than originally estimated. We have also seen around 5% of people not eligible for automatic enrolment choosing to opt-in to their employer’s pension scheme.

Families with children under the age of three are able to claim the care component of Disability Living Allowance where the child’s care needs are substantially in excess of the needs of a child of the same age without a disability.

From 9 April 2001, the age condition for entitlement to the higher rate mobility component was lowered from 5 years to 3 years. In deciding to set the lower age limit, the department considered views of medical advisors and independent research; while the development of walking ability varies from child to child, by age 3 it was felt that it is realistically possible in the majority of cases to make an informed decision as to whether an inability to walk is the result of disability.

We do however appreciate the difficulties that some families with severely disabled children aged under 3 face. We have met stakeholders at both Ministerial and official level to hear their concerns first-hand and are continuing to consider the matter.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy is to develop its staff in the skills and knowledge required to support a range of claimants sensitively and to respect their individual needs. The DWP aim is to identify and direct victims of human trafficking at the earliest opportunity to agencies able to support them.

The training for DWP staff is contained within an overarching “Vulnerability” session. The number of Jobcentre Plus staff who have undergone the training since publication in January 2016 is 10,156.

This Government is committed to action that tackles the root causes of poverty and disadvantage, not just the symptoms. As part of our approach, we fully recognise that the right intervention, at the right time, can make a real difference to the lives of children and their families. This is why, for example, we are developing a new approach to relationship support. This is based on the latest evidence from the Early Intervention Foundation that children exposed to frequent, intense and poorly resolved conflict between their parents are at risk of poorer long term outcomes. Our approach targets couples and parents during key life transitions; and by doubling the available funding since April 2016 for the remainder of this Parliament we can ensure that more families benefit from this new approach.

The Government carefully considered the impact of the reduced benefit cap on children as part of the policy making process.

The government believes that work is the best route out of poverty and it is not in the best interests of children to live in workless households. The benefit cap is expected to encourage more parents to work which is in the best interests of children.

A wide range of help and support has been put in place to assist parents, including budgeting and employment support and support with child care. DHPs are also available to assist those affected by the measure. The Government has allocated a total of £870m for DHP payments for five years from 2016/17.

Exemptions apply where someone in the household is entitled to a disability benefit such as Personal Independence Payment or Disability Living Allowance. We have introduced new exemptions for households where someone is entitled to Carer’s Allowance, the carer’s element of Universal Credit, or Guardian’s Allowance.

Parents affected by the benefit cap will still be entitled to £23,000 p.a. in Greater London and £20,000 p.a. outside Greater London which is more than the earnings of many working households.

The Government published an updated Impact Assessment on 25 August, 2016 which is available on the Gov.Uk website. An Equality Analysis was published on the legislation.gov.uk website on the same page as Statutory Instrument Number 2016/909.

The Personal Independence Payment Assessment Guide (PIPAG) highlights that any examination should be tailored to the individual claimant. There is no specific guidance on taking account of a claimant’s means of arrival at the assessment centre as this does not form part of a routine PIP assessment. The PIPAG is clear that the health professional should explore how the claimant manages their mobility needs on a “typical day”, which might include the day of the assessment, and should explore both “good” and “bad” days.